What My Father Told the Ghost - Max Doty

What My Father Told the Ghost - Max Doty

Once, at a seance, you started yelling
at your own dead father. I don't know

about what. The man died gardening:
a heart attack over a bed of flowers.

A smoker, a doctor, ten years too old
to be a father. But you're never too old

to be an asshole. You garden too.
You like fruit trees; when you still

lived at mom's house, you planted
sixteen in rows, a four by four square.

You ask about them sometimes, but
Jacob and I never claim to have

green thumbs. We don't water your old
orchard. Still, a couple Granny Smith's

have survived, even five years later.
The eight-foot fence stands rusted.

Across from sick trees, browning
grape vines clutch their metal lattice.

Left alone it can take a long time
for things to die. When you left, you took

the dog. "She doesn't want him anyway,"
you told us. "She doesn't like him."

Do you channel the lost spirit when you
stroke the collie's ears? Do you feel the ghost

when you rub your hands across the stalks
of snow peas? Growing up, we would have

died to be those oracles - but you never
asked. We woke to homemade waffles

on weekend mornings and ate in silence
as you read the paper. We felt you holding

us by the touch of the clothes you bought.
You taught us so much silence. Still, you never

taught hate. Seperation burns, but I have
read your love in the rock formations

of the backyard Japanese garden,
the careful labels of the photo albums.

I will have nothing to shout at your ashes.